MCSO works to strengthen sex-crime cases rejected by county attorney

by JJ Hensley - Sept. 25, 2012 11:30 PMThe Republic | azcentral.com

Maricopa County sheriff's detectives have agreed to further investigate 28 botched sex-crime cases -- including one that's a decade old -- after the County Attorney's Office said additional work was needed for them to be considered for prosecution.

Some of the cases flagged by prosecutors involve suspects whose criminal histories include sex crimes and who allegedly committed assaults that sheriff's investigators failed to adequately look into, according to a document prosecutors prepared for detectives.

In one case, a man confessed to family members that he sexually assaulted an acquaintance in 2002, but it appears his relatives were not interviewed by deputies and the man was never prosecuted for the crime. The man, whose criminal history includes a sexual assault in Iowa, is listed as a suspect in two other cases in Chandler and was prosecuted this year for failure to register as a sex offender, the document shows.

"We worked jointly with the County Attorney's Office to get to the bottom of this," Sheriff Joe Arpaio said Tuesday. "We reviewed these cases because we wanted to do the best we could on every single case. Even when we disagreed with the County Attorney's Office, we still went the extra yard to ensure that no stone was unturned."

The Sheriff's Office was forced to reopen its investigations of hundreds of sex crimes after investigative failures in a series of El Mirage cases came to light in late 2007. An internal audit of more than 500 cases handled from 2005 through 2008 found that more than 400 required additional police work. Some of those investigations have continued since the County Attorney's Office began reviewing the cases. The office returned 59, or roughly 10 percent of the cases it reviewed, to sheriff's detectives in late July asking for additional work.

The balance of the cases reviewed by the County Attorney's Office were closed for several reasons. Some had been properly investigated and needed no further action. In others, prosecutors felt there was no reasonable likelihood of a conviction. Sometimes, victims or witnesses could no longer be located, or victims no longer wanted to press charges.

The cases the sheriff's detectives have agreed to revisit largely require them to do follow-up interviews with suspects and victims. They declined to conduct additional investigation of 31 cases flagged by prosecutors. Investigators said they had exhausted their leads to track down victims, suspects or witnesses to the crimes in those cases.

A review of the cases by The Arizona Republic showed those recommended for reinvestigation were split roughly evenly by year: 19 in 2005 and 2007, 20 in 2006, with a lone case dating to 2002 and none in 2008. Geographically, the cases were scattered throughout 20 communities within the sheriff's 9,200-square-mile jurisdiction. Nine originated in El Mirage, where the problems first emerged, but others involved crimes in Mesa, Buckeye, Queen Creek and Guadalupe.

In the 2002 assault now being reinvestigated, the County Attorney's report noted that sheriff's investigators did not appear to have interviewed family members to whom the suspect confessed about sexually assaulting an acquaintance.

Sheriff's investigators who reassigned the case this summer asked detectives to coordinate with Chandler police and to make additional attempts to contact the victim, according to the document: "Based on new information from (the Maricopa County Attorney's Office) that suspect is a repeat offender."

Another suspect alleged to have raped a woman after a 2005 encounter in a bar was never interviewed by the Sheriff's Office, according to prosecutors. That case was reassigned recently with a request for sheriff's detectives to contact the victim to gauge her willingness to help prosecutors. A deputy county attorney noted in remarks about the case that the suspect has an extensive history of "out of state and prior sexual allegations."

The County Attorney's Office has been conducting a two-pronged probe into the sex-crimes investigations reopened by the Sheriff's Office. One aspect is focusing on the potential for criminal prosecutions related to the cases. The other is tracking the sheriff's ongoing internal probe into who is responsible for the flawed handling of the cases.

In the latter, the county attorney functions much like a legal adviser on human-resource issues.

County Attorney Bill Montgomery said his office reviewed the sheriff's investigations with an eye toward whether prosecutors had enough information to make charging decisions in the cases. Their aim was to determine whether there was "reasonable likelihood of conviction," a factor weighed in deciding whether to prosecute.

One of the cases reviewed by Montgomery's office was at least 10 years old. But the time that has lapsed is only one factor prosecutors weigh in deciding whether to file charges against the suspect, Montgomery said. Prosecutors who reviewed cases also tried to give the Sheriff's Office a sense of what work was needed on each case.

Regarding the sheriff's decision not to pursue some of the county attorney's recommendations, Montgomery said: "There are some cases where law-enforcement agencies and prosecutors just disagree about how successful a presentation to a jury might eventually turn out. That happens -- and that's each agency in the criminal-justice system doing their jobs as best they can, and each side disagreeing on what each side can do."

Seventeen of the 28 cases that sheriff's detectives agreed to further investigate require follow-up because the original work or documentation was not sufficient, according to documents obtained by The Republic. The rest deal with suspects who have extensive criminal histories, victims who were unresponsive after detectives initially contacted them, suspects who were not initially located, and investigations that suffered because of training issues on the statute of limitations and the prosecutable age of a suspect.

Sheriff's administrators say they have nearly completed the additional work.

"They told us from the beginning, 'When you guys get these recommendations back from us, we understand you might not agree,' " Sheriff's Lt. Chad Brackman said. "They looked at it from the prosecutor perspective."

Once lingering criminal prosecutions are handled, the Sheriff's Office can finish its internal investigation into who should be held responsible for the failures. They have focused on four deputies they believe to be primarily responsible for the failures, but they cannot yet publicly identify them.

The problems with sex-crime investigations are not limited to the Sheriff's Office, Montgomery said. Phoenix police reviewed 560 cases dating to 2005 after deficiencies emerged through a city audit and an internal review. Police sent 34 of those to prosecutors for review, and they declined to pursue nearly half, a department spokesman said.

After the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office reopened more than 400 sex-crimes cases over questions about its police work, an Arizona Republic investigation reveals the full impact of the agency's failures.

Coming over the next week:

An interactive map of the reported assaults and details of detectives and prosecutors' handling of the cases.

An in-depth look at the causes of the agency's failures.

On 12 News tonight at 10, reporter JJ Hensley offers insights on the five-month investigative project and its findings.